The prison sentences of eight members of an Amish sect were reduced by a federal judge in Cleveland on Monday after hate crime convictions were thrown out against them in a case involving hair- and beard-cutting attacks on other Amish in Ohio.
In all,...

A central Florida man faces hate crime charges after a bar fight during which he hit another man in the head with a bottle.
Jail records show 44-year-old Jason Cuellar remains in the Volusia County Jail following the Friday night incident.
Deputies...

ORMOND BEACH — A Central Florida man faces hate crime charges after authorities say he told a man the bar they were in wasn't for blacks and hit him with a bottle.
Forty-four-year-old Jason Cuellar was brought to the Volusia County Jail...

Israeli police say a fire has damaged a Greek Orthodox seminary in Jerusalem in what they suspect is a hate crime.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said "anti-Christian" slogans were scribbled in Hebrew on the seminary's walls. He said the fire...

The mother of Trayvon Martin says she's disappointed that federal prosecutors decided not to charge a neighborhood watch volunteer with a hate crime for killing her son three years ago.
Speaking with The Associated Press on Wednesday before the third anniversary of her 17-year-old son's death, Sybrina Fulton says she still believes George Zimmerman got away with murder.
"He took a life, carelessly and recklessly, and he shouldn't deserve to have his entire life walking around on the street free. I...

The Justice Department's decision to not prosecute a civilian neighborhood watch volunteer for a hate crime in the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager is not necessarily a harbinger of how it will rule in two other high-profile deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police officers, legal experts say.
That is because the standards used to gauge the existence of a hate crime committed by civilians are different from those used to measure the behavior of police officers, who can be charged...

George Zimmerman, the former neighborhood watch volunteer who fatally shot Trayvon Martin in a 2012 confrontation with the teenager, will not face federal charges, the Justice Department said Tuesday.
The decision, announced in the waning days of Attorney General Eric Holder's tenure, resolves a case that focused public attention on self-defense laws and became a flashpoint in the national conversation about race two years before the Ferguson, Missouri, police shooting.
Zimmerman has maintained that...

The leader of a breakaway Amish group in Ohio whose hate crime convictions for beard- and hair-cutting attacks were overturned wants a federal judge to release him from prison when he's resentenced next month.
All 16 members found guilty in the attacks that targeted Amish who had criticized them are to be resentenced March 2 in Cleveland since the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the most serious convictions against them.
Defense attorneys for Sam Mullet Sr. said his 15-year sentence...

Sixteen Amish men and women whose hate crime convictions in beard- and hair-cutting attacks were overturned still should receive the same sentences, federal prosecutors told a judge who will resentence the group.
The members of the eastern Ohio Amish group are scheduled to be resentenced March 2 after the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned only their hate crimes convictions.
New sentences are required because the original sentences were based both on hate crimes convictions and convictions...

The fathers of three young Muslims allegedly slain by a neighbor who was angry over parking spots stood before their caskets Thursday and urged a crowd of thousands to protect others by demanding justice.
More than 5,000 people came to the funeral of Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23; his wife, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21; and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, who were killed Tuesday in the couple's Chapel Hill apartment.
A self-described "gun toting" atheist with a reputation for bullying his neighbors,...